Technology Blog

Peter Malkin’s Amazing List of Music Business Tools

Comments Off Written on October 27th, 2010 by
Categories: Technology Blog

The music business evolves and becomes more and more technical every day. It used to be so simple. You get a band together, get a couple of gigs, build your networks, and you are on your way to stardom.

The music business has been overturned multiple times in the last few years and new technology advances continue to change how music is produced, distributed, and promoted. Trying to stay up-to-date with all of the different aspects of online music tools and sites is a dizzying tasks with important new sites popping up almost daily.

Music industry veteran Peter Malkin recently released an epic video about the many tools available online for musicians, music lovers, and music promoters.

One of Peter’s final points is to get out there and do it the old fashioned way, but his list of sites is so expansive and valuable that it makes you thinks he favors a blend of the old and the new.

As Peter ticks off almost 100 tools, my initial thought was it would be great to have all of those tools available as links to check out. Peter didn’t have the links listed so I took some time and gathered the list and URLs for each tool.

If you aren’t in the music business but love music, there are quite a few gems in this list for finding and listening to music.

Here is Peter’s excellent but mind spinning video. Links to all of the sites Peter mentions are listed after the jump.

Make sure you check out Peter’s Blog too.

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5 Terrific Data Visualization Applications

Comments Off Written on October 24th, 2010 by
Categories: Front Page, Technology Blog

As technology advances, the amount of data collected continues to increase exponentially. Much of this data could be very useful if harnessed and presented in a way that turns it into Information.

This is “Part 1″ in a series of articles about great data visualization tools and applications.

One use of data visualization tools is corporate and government dashboards. Being able to apply data visualization tools to corporate and competitive data is a growing need in the information age. The tools to visualize the data continue to improve and evolve and corporate use allows for better trend identification and decision making.

Here are 5 outstanding data visualization tools:

1. Akamai Real Time Web Monitor

Akamai Real Time Web Monitor

Akamai Real Time Web Monitor

Akamai is a company that handles a large percentage of the web’s traffic. As a result, they have an enormous amount of data moving through their networks. They monitor global Internet conditions around the clock in real time. With this real-time data they can identify the global regions with the greatest attack traffic, cities with the slowest Web connections (latency), and geographic areas with the most Web traffic (traffic density).

This is an interesting application because it allows a user to know in real time what is happening all over the world, in a visual manner. It takes a great amount of data and presents it in a very easy-to-view way.

2. Voyage RSS Reader

Voyage RSS Reader

Voyage RSS Reader

Voyage is a web-based RSS reader that visually displays RSS feeds on a timeline. It’s a great way to explore the different feeds you subscribe in a completely different format.

The application bubbles up content in a timeline based approach. You can surf through and move around the articles with the most important and most recent items getting priority positioning.

Voyage is a good model for future news and information interfaces because it allows for bringing the most relevant information to the forefront as it wades through mountains of information. Adding personalization to this and you’ve got a huge advance.

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Top 10 Tips for Building a BI Dashboard

Comments Off Written on October 20th, 2010 by
Categories: Front Page, Technology Blog

1. Before building your dashboard, spend a healthy amount of time determining what business information should be displayed on the primary display.

The best time to work through these issues is before you start working on the technology. Sometimes it is good to get an outsider that isn’t embedded in all of the issues of the day to help you work through this conceptually.

2. Don’t try to put everything in the dashboard

The dashboard should be the top level view for that person. It doesn’t need to everything imaginable in it. It takes work to get to the real important issues but narrowing it down will pay off in the end.

3. Make sure you have access or can collect the data you want to measure.

This seems to be a no-brainer but you’d be surprised how many things that are important AREN’T being tracked or recorded. Sometimes you need to add systems to get to the data you need.

4. Know the dashboard audience and understand what information they need.

It’s easy to make assumptions about what people need to make decisions. Make sure the people involved have input and a voice in the process.

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